Alfa P3

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Jim Gullan modeled the new body on this one, he did much the same thing later when he built the Ballot Olds (a totally different car)... this he openly built along the basic lines of the ERA that Whitehead had raced here.

The streamlined Tipo B on the Alfa Club de France stand at Retromobile, coming from the Alfa museum, is indeed a replica made under Fusi's supervision during the 60s.

I add for those possibly interested in the "P3 transmission" issue that Doug Nye gave TNF his own conclusions, but in another thread, some not everybody has noticed it ( I did only recently )http://www.atlasf1.c...&threadid=37444Down page 1 .

I think that with 2 crown and pinion gears, closer to the ends of the axle, rather than one in the middle of the axle, there would be better torque control.

I would also think that the additional weight of 2 sets of ring and pinions rather than one would pretty much cancel out any benificial effect.

Although I agree IN GENERAL that lowering the seat by using 2 ring and pinions rather than 1 wouldn't have much effect, it would have SOME effect on the CG of the car, especially with the driver aboard.

Jano came up all the time with unusual designs to attempt to solve problems that appeared. The outboard petrol tanks on the Lancia D50...the Bugatti T251 GP car with it's "unusual" cross-tiebar (I don't really know what this oddball setup should be called) suspension...etc...

Roger - that figure is quoted in both Sheldon and Nixon. The start was VERY wet and in a picture in Nixon you can see an Auto Union starting very fast: this is presumably Stuck - only one car is ahead of him just seconds into the race.

Fastest lap was set by Momberger in 5min12.0sec - I'd guess Stuck's opening lap was substantially longer than that!

So the earlier Tipo A has contra-rotating shafts and the Topo B (P3) doesn't?? That seems like a HUGE oversight to me.

I'm sure that the swing axle set up was at least on the drawing board by 1934, and it works better anyway..

I also think that if Alfa had more money, the 12c 36s, 12c37s and 3 liter 312s would have been rather sucessful, and Jano would not have been booted out....but that is probibly a subject for another thread...

Indeed... a huge oversight... and while it might have been tremendously well balanced and all the other stuff, surely the self-cancelling of torque reactions would have given it more traction and thus made it a quicker car still.

First I would like to say how much I have enjoyed reading this thread.

Such a worthy subject too: the beautiful Tipo B ("P3").

I know from the first posting, that my point will be a little off-topic, but I am interested in the persistent rumour that lowering the seated height of the driver was either a) one of the objectives of the design or b) a fortuitous result (or not depending upon who you read!).

Last week at Goodwood I was studying the jewel-like 1927 straight-eight 1.5-litre Delage.

Now the driver sits very low in the Delage - much lower than in the Tipo B and although the Dealge's handling characteristics have been criticised, it does seem to have been a formidable achievement (especially as early as 1927) to arrange matters thus in a Grand Prix car (of course I am aware of how low Reid Railton's Rileys were at about the same time).